Category: Fact Check

La guerra entre Israel y Hamas está siendo foco de mucha desinformación. Una serie de publicaciones en redes sociales afirman que en Gaza hay personas maquillándose heridas.

“A chequear un poquito el conteo tan veloz de fallecidos de Gaza. Miren q hay actores muy buenos y maquilladores de primera”, dice una publicación en X del 1 de noviembre.

“Este es el departamento de efectos especiales de #Hamás. TODO ES UN SHOW .. Ojo, al principio impresiona pero rápidamente comprendes que es maquillaje.  ¡¡¡Gaza no es Hollywood!!!  Abramos los ojos a la farsa de Hamás.  Son los monstruos con la complicidad de LFI”, dice otra publicación en X el 4 de noviembre.

Las imágenes que acompañan las publicaciones no son actuales, sino de 2017, y muestran un proyecto de la organización no gubernamental Médicos del Mundo en Gaza, donde participaron maquilladores palestinos. 

PolitiFact realizó una búsqueda inversa de imágenes que condujo a un video en YouTube del medio de Palestina The Gaza Post. Este data de febrero de 2017.

El video está en árabe y no hay subtítulos disponibles, pero una traducción a través del sistema del traductor de Google nos muestra que se titula “Los trucos cinematográficos son un arte que transmite Gaza de una manera diferente al mundo”. Asimismo, el traductor de imágenes de Google muestra que los dos entrevistados son miembros de un equipo de maquillaje cinematográfico. 

PolitiFact contactó a Médicos del Mundo. Alba Villén, directora de comunicación de la organización, confirmó que las imágenes no están relacionadas con la situación actual en la región. 

Asimismo, Villén dijo que “las imágenes son de un simulacro en el marco del proyecto de hospitales seguros de Médicos del Mundo Francia en 2017, con objetivos de preparación”. A lo que añadió que las heridas falsas fueron pintadas por maquilladores de efectos especiales en Gaza para un ejercicio de formación médica de Médicos del Mundo.

Una búsqueda de imágenes inversa también dirige a un reportaje de marzo de 2017 de la cadena de televisión turca, TRT World, que publica en inglés y que se centra en el papel de las mujeres maquillistas. En este aparecen imágenes muy parecidas a las de The Gaza Post. 

La narradora del video de TRT World cuenta que la artista de maquillaje está participando en un proyecto de la organización benéfica Médicos del Mundo, donde se busca concienciar sobre el peligro al que se enfrentan los habitantes de Gaza. En el video de TRT World entrevistan a un maquillista, quien también salía en el video de The Gaza Post. Al principio del reportaje se ve un cartel en el que se lee “simulation”, simulación en inglés. 

En ninguno de los dos videos se hace referencia a lo que dicen las publicaciones de redes sociales. 

Calificamos la declaración que este video muestra a personas en Gaza maquillándose heridas como Falsa.

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.

After a woman’s dismembered body was discovered Nov. 5 in a Cincinnati neighborhood, social media users have spread rumors that more bodies were found and that a serial killer may be on the loose.

“Females please be safe and keep something on you and walk in groups,” a person warned in a Nov 9 Facebook post. “There is a serial killer in Cincinnati.”

The post claimed that seven women’s bodies have been found “chopped up” and urged followers to share the post to get the word out.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The body of one unidentified victim, a Black woman in her late 20s or early 30s, was found in a wooded area in the city’s North Fairmount neighborhood. Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco said in a Nov. 7 news conference that she ruled the death a homicide.

But no other dismembered bodies have been found. Sammarco, who couldn’t be reached because of the Veterans Day holiday, told The Cincinnati Enquirer in a Nov 9 article that her office had not received calls about any other dismembered bodies being discovered.

Cincinnati Police Department spokesperson Lt. Jonathan Cunningham said he has been receiving calls asking whether more bodies had been found. 

“This is completely false,” he told PolitiFact in a Nov. 10 email. “There is only one dismembered body found, which was located on Sunday, Nov. 5.”

The investigation into that case continues.

The Facebook claim that a serial killer has dismembered seven women in Cincinnati is False.

An Election Day glitch in eastern Pennsylvania has some social media users declaring it evidence that the entire country’s election system is corrupt.

Text on a Nov. 8 Instagram post read, “Are U.S. elections compromised?”

Below that, the post shared a screenshot of an X post from conservative commentator Benny Johnson that said, “Voting machines in Pennsylvania are now being shut down after reports of machines ‘flipping votes.’ And this is why Americans have lost all faith in our electoral process.”

“Add this to the list of election fraud cases we’ve recently learned about,” Johnson’s post said.

(Screengrab from Instagram)

The Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

This post gives a misleading impression of what happened on Election Day in Pennsylvania.

Some voters in Northampton County, about 50 miles north of Philadelphia, reported seeing voting machines appear to switch their votes in two judicial races. But local voting rights advocates who reviewed the matter said they found no indication of election fraud.

Voters statewide were asked to decide whether two sitting Superior Court judges, Democrat Jack Panella and Republican Victor Stabile, should retain their positions for 10 more years. Voters could select “yes” or “no” for each candidate. Panella and Stabile were not running against each other; both were seeking an additional term.

However, Northampton County officials found that a voting machine programming error caused votes for the two judges to appear switched when voters’ ballot choices were printed. For example, if a voter marked “yes” for Panella and “no” for Stabile, the printed summary read “no” for Panella and “yes” for Stabile.

Northampton County government officials said that despite this printer output error, their review of the matter found the voting machines’ backend system recorded voters’ choices accurately and all votes were tabulated properly.

“What you read (on paper) and what the computer reads are two different things. The computer does not read the text that is printed out,” said Northampton County Administration Director Charles Dertinger, who oversees the elections division, during a Nov. 7 press conference.

Election Systems & Software, the company that made the ExpressXL voting machines, took responsibility for the error. Linda Bennett, the company’s senior vice president of customer operations, said at the press conference that “a clerical labeling error that was made by an ES&S employee” caused the printed summary to show the wrong vote selection.

The county briefly took the voting machines offline Election Day morning when the issue arose. After obtaining a court order, the county was permitted to continue using the machines as long as voters were informed of the issue.

Pennsylvania’s State Department said this issue affected only some voters in Northampton County, and only those two judicial seat questions. No other statewide races were affected, the department said.

As of Nov. 10, the state’s unofficial election results show both Panella and Stabile retaining their Superior Court seats, each with a margin of hundreds of thousands of votes. About 60,000 votes were cast for these races in Northampton County.

Five local voting rights advocacy groups, including Common Cause Pennsylvania and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, called the incident “an unfortunate situation caused by human error,” but said it did not amount to election fraud.

“This is a programming error that is being weaponized for disinformation purposes,” Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, told PolitiFact.

The voting rights groups urged election officials to investigate the voting machine error and make changes to ensure similar mistakes do not occur in future elections.

We rate the claim that this instance of Pennsylvania voting machines “flipping votes” is evidence of “election fraud” False.

The morning after Election Day, a county election worker in Washington state opened an envelope and found white powder. Election workers would later learn the envelope contained a typed threat: “end elections now.”

The threat was unusual for Pierce County election officials, but it was one of multiple jurisdictions that received letters in recent days containing powder. 

After Election Day Nov. 7, the FBI told election officials that law enforcement is investigating multiple letters containing suspicious substances that were mailed to election offices in California, Georgia, Oregon, Nevada and Washington. 

“In at least four instances, preliminary tests of the suspicious substance indicated the presence of fentanyl,” the Nov. 9 FBI notice said.

Linda Farmer, the Pierce County auditor, said her staff evacuated and returned to work in 2½ hours. “It was important to them to show democracy would not be deterred,” Farmer said. She added that initial testing showed the substance her office received was baking soda, but the investigation continues.

The letters are part of a pattern of threats election workers have faced since the 2020 election, as some politicians and pundits have spread misinformation about how election workers do their jobs.

Some election offices now stock Narcan, a medicine that reverses overdoses from opioids like fentanyl. However, merely touching fentanyl is not deadly.

Here’s what we know about the threats to election offices and the misinformation on fentanyl’s effects.

Letters sent to multiple states 

Secretaries of state in Washington, Nevada and California confirmed this month that suspicious letters were sent or addressed to jurisdictions in their states.

Police in Washington’s King and Spokane counties said initial testing showed the letters contained traces of fentanyl. 

King County election officials also received a letter during the August primary that had traces of fentanyl.

Authorities are investigating two letters in California that were intercepted before they reached election offices. A letter that arrived in Lane County, Oregon, is also under investigation. 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Nov. 10 on X that law enforcement said that a letter sent to Fulton County had been intercepted.

You cannot accidentally overdose by touching powdered fentanyl or being in a room with it

Receiving letters with unknown powders is threatening and scary. Some powders, such as anthrax, can sicken people who come into contact with it. However, toxicology experts say that’s not the case with fentanyl. 

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid and its potency makes even a small amount of the drug lethal. However, fentanyl isn’t absorbed well by the skin; for fentanyl to physically affect the body, it must enter the bloodstream. 

“It’s really hard to get fentanyl into your body unless you directly snort it into your nose, directly drink it or inject it with a needle,” said Robert Valuck, executive director of the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention at the University of Colorado. 

People also cannot get sick by being in a room with powdered fentanyl. That’s because it doesn’t easily vaporize. 

“People can snort (fentanyl), but this is intentional. It does not just get into the air,” Dr. Ryan Marino, a toxicologist and emergency room physician who studies addiction at Case Western Reserve University, said in a February YouTube video. “To cause toxicity from breathing it in you would probably have to be in a wind tunnel with dunes of fentanyl around you.” 

Attacks on election officials threaten democracy

Many election officials have left their positions because of the threats to their safety.

Reports by advocacy groups show that a large percentage of election workers since 2020 are new in their jobs. 

Election administration is a specialized field and it takes time for people to learn procedures and equipment.

“Those with less experience are more prone to making small mistakes based on lack of knowledge — mistakes that, however innocuous, may be interpreted by hyper-partisans as malicious acts,” said a September report by Issue One, a democracy-focused advocacy group. 

Such mistakes can fuel misinformation, and that misinformation can trigger threats against election workers.

In 2020 and 2022, misinformation wrongly claimed that election workers and voting machines were flipping results. 

But local election workers follow state laws and procedures that are designed to thwart voter fraud and include checks and balances to prevent workers from committing wrongdoing.

A Justice Department Election Threats Task Force formed in 2021 has charged 14 cases as of August involving threats against election officials and secured nine convictions. In one case, an Iowa man left death threat voicemails for a local and state official in Arizona, threatening hangings and “torches and pitchforks.” The man was sentenced to 2½ years in prison.

“Election officials are just doing their job — they are not putting their thumb on the scale, they are not in charge of what the results are,” said Suzanne Almeida, state operations director at Common Cause, a group advocating for accessible voting. “They are incredibly dedicated public servants, especially in the face of these threats.”

RELATED: Poll workers are short-staffed, under attack — and quietly defending democracy

RELATED: We fact-checked misinformation about the midterm elections, from Maricopa County to Detroit

Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump took the witness stand to testify in New York’s fraud trial against the former president and his business. 

As he campaigns to reclaim the White House in 2024, Trump has been active on his social media platform Truth Social throughout the trial, and a post he made before Ivanka’s Nov. 8 testimony caught some social media users’ attention. 

“It all makes sense now,” said a woman in a video posted Nov. 8. The woman repeatedly referred to a screenshot of Donald Trump’s Nov. 8 Truth Social post, which said that Ivanka would be testifying. “This whole court case — now that it’s all coming together, it has nothing to do with his home in Mar-a-Lago. Nothing.” 

The woman claimed she had “decoded” parts of the former president’s Truth Social post and determined that the case wasn’t about the value of Trump’s assets at all. 

“Letitia Peekaboo James, she decodes to this — Are you ready for this? — Trump prophecy,” she said, without explaining how she drew “decoding” conclusions.  

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The video’s claim that the New York case against Trump has “nothing to do with” Mar-a-Lago is inaccurate. 

In 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit, alleging that Trump and the Trump Organization “created more than 200 false and misleading valuations of assets” to defraud financial institutions. The lawsuit alleges that from 2011 to 2021, Trump and his businesses inflated assets by billions of dollars to save hundreds of millions of dollars on loans and insurance.

Trump has denied wrongdoing. The civil fraud trial continued as of Nov. 10. 

Among the properties with disputed valuations is Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

On Sept. 26, New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that from 2011 to 2021, the Palm Beach County property appraiser determined Mar-a-Lago’s value was “between $18 million and $27.6 million.” But financial records show that Trump valued Mar-a-Lago  from $426 million to $612 million, “an overvaluation of at least 2,300%,” Engoron wrote in his court order, using italicization.

The county appraiser is a government office that assesses property values for tax purposes only, and experts say a county appraiser’s valuation is often lower than what a property could be sold for on the open market. Palm Beach real estate experts told media outlets that $18 million was a very low valuation. 

When Engoron ruled Sept. 26 that Trump and his company were liable for fraud, he relied on more than discrepancies with Mar-a-Lago’s valuation. The judge also chastised Trump for claiming his Manhattan apartment was nearly three times its actual size and inflating its valuation, for example. 

Regardless of Mar-a-Lago’s exact value, the question of whether Trump assets’ values were inflated remains central to the New York fraud case.

Our ruling

A Facebook post claimed that New York’s fraud case against Trump “has nothing to do with his home in Mar-a-Lago.”

The case against Trump clearly lays out that overvaluation of properties — including Trump’s  Mar-a-Lago estate — is a key component to the fraud trial.

We rate this claim False.

A recent TikTok post suggests that a bomber aircraft spotted in New York is evidence that the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah will attack Israel. 

“Alert,” text in the November video says. “B-2 stealth bomber seen over New York” and “Hezbollah may declare war on Israel tomm,” using an abbreviation for “tomorrow.”  

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

It’s true that a B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber was spotted flying Nov. 2 in Ulster County, New York, as reported by the Daily Freeman, a Kingston, New York, newspaper. But Francis J. DeMaro Jr., a spokesperson for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the paper that the B-2 flyover was part of a training mission held as part of a spirit week related to the Army versus Air Force football game.

“It’s considered a Spirit so in the spirit of the football game, the Air Force shows its strength by flying aircraft over the Academy,” DeMaro said. 

West Point wrote about the flyover in a Nov. 2 Facebook post, making clear it was connected to the football game and not to Israel.

The Freeman also reported that West Point warned about the flyover in an Oct. 17 press release, saying that in preparation for the game, the Army had begun “their traditional flyovers above the skies of the West Point.” 

We rate claims the flyover is related to Hezbollah and Israel Pants on Fire!

 

Fans of superstar singer Taylor Swift can now see “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” film in theaters worldwide, but recent social media posts suggest that’s not so if they live in Israel.

“Taylor Swift pulls Eras film screenings in Israel,” reads the text in a video shared Nov. 6 on Instagram. In the video, a woman says people were sharing what appeared to be screenshots of Swift’s website showing a message that said, “All screenings for this country are postponed until further notice.” 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

When PolitiFact visited Swift’s website for the movie Nov. 8, tickets were available for the movie in Israel. 

TMZ reported Nov. 6 that a “technical issue” that day meant “people who were going to Taylor’s official website for the ‘Eras’ movie could not pull up Israeli locations at all.” The celebrity news website said the delay was caused by a “third-party company” and that “even while tickets in Israel were temporarily not available to the public on TS’s site, we confirmed you could still go to individual Israeli theater chains/sites and purchase tickets there.” 

That same day, The Jerusalem Post reported that fans in Jerusalem had attended a Nov. 4 screening of “The Eras Tour.” 

So far, Swift hasn’t taken a stance on the Israel-Hamas war, despite pressure from people on both sides.

We rate claims that she pulled her movie from Israel False.

 

Singer Kelly Clarkson keeps showing up in videos in which she appears to promote weight loss products. But these videos are fake, and you shouldn’t fall for them. 

One recent example is an Oct. 28 Facebook post in which Clarkson appears to say: “Yeah, it’s been crazy, I never would’ve imagined anything like this happening to me. My weight has always been something I’ve struggled with up until this point. I was at an all-time low and God blessed me with these miracle gummies. My good friend Lainey Wilson recommended them to me, and let me tell you, these things really are a miracle. In just three months, I lost 37 pounds and feel better than ever. I’m so excited to be partnering with this company because they have already improved my life so much. I can’t wait to improve yours, too.” 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Clarkson’s publicist has told The Associated Press that Clarkson isn’t a spokesperson for any weight loss products or programs.

However, previous videos featuring the singer were altered to make it look as if she were such a spokesperson.

One of the clips in this Facebook post originated on Clarkson’s social media pages, in which she talks not about weight loss or diet gummies but about her red flags in relationships.

We rate claims that this video, or other videos, that appear to show Clarkson promoting weight loss products are authentic False.

 

Researchers continue to pursue a cure for diabetes, but a recent social media post suggests one already exists — and is being promoted by television personalities. 

“An American doctor said he will pay $1 million to anyone who could not cure diabetes with his new drug,” CNN news anchor Wolf Blitzer appears to say in a video shared Nov. 6 on Facebook. “The new medicine normalizes blood sugar levels after the first use.”

The video then cuts to Dr. Mehmet Oz, former Republican Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate and former host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” who appears to say: “I guarantee you that your blood sugar levels will return to normal in three days. All symptoms will disappear within two weeks and diabetes will never return. One hundred thousand Americans have already tried the medicine on themselves and got rid of diabetes.”

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The first clue that this video was altered: the alleged audio of Blitzer and Oz talking doesn’t sync with their mouths’ movements. 

The Blitzer clip appears to have come from a September episode of “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” in which he discussed an effort by one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants to move a pending criminal case to federal court. 

We couldn’t find the Oz clip, but we also found no evidence that he’s promoting a diabetes cure.

But in 2019, Oz posted on Facebook that social media users “might have seen ads for my ‘diabetes breakthrough’ promising to cure diabetes and regular blood sugar in two weeks.” 

“Friends and viewers wanted to know if it was legit,” Oz wrote. “It wasn’t.”

We rate claims these videos show Blitzer and Oz promoting a diabetes cure False.

 

A recent Facebook post suggests that X owner Elon Musk has died. But that’s wrong. 

“Shock!” the Oct. 31 post says. “The tragic end of Elon Musk. His secret finally revealed.” 

The post also includes an altered video that makes it appear as if BBC News reported that Musk was offering an investment opportunity that would let British residents quit their jobs.

We’ve previously fact-checked other posts claiming such opportunities for people in the United Kingdom and South Africa, and they’re false. 

This post, which was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed, is too. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

As of Nov. 8, about a week after his alleged demise, Musk was active on X, posting about another of his companies, SpaceX, and resharing a post from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. 

Musk’s death would be international news, and widely reported. But the latest reports from his orbit concern his new artificial intelligence company, a brain-chip startup, and changes at X. 

We rate claims that he died False.